A history of the women who served Russia as wartime nurses during the Great War, featuring heretofore untold and highly compelling stories, filled with danger and deprivation, excitement and opportunity, sorrow and trauma, scandal and controversy.

Looking through the prisms of gender, race, and class, Herndon traces how the gospel of personal responsibility permeates American thinking about fatness and in the process often victimizes women and children.

Dowbiggin traces the concerted and deliberate way in which the old order of looking to family and community for guidance gave way to seeking guidance from marriage and family counseling professionals and what that shift means for American families.